The Secret Garden Tour 2024

Storyboard
Written By Ellis Anderson
May 2024

Six private French Quarter homes and the Historic BK House museum threw open their garden gates this weekend for the ever-popular Secret Gardens Tour, produced annually by the Patio Planters of the Vieux Carré. The organization is dedicated to the preservation and beautification of the French Quarter. This annual fund-raiser helps the group produce the popular Caroling in Jackson Square each year.

- photos by Ellis Anderson 

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This feature is made possible by Connie & Michael Warner

Foreground: CJ Blanda welcomes people to his lush garden, including Patio Planters volunteer Michele Broom.

Patio gardener Billy Thomas, who cares for one of the gardens on tour and Patio Planters volunteer Blake Aucoin.

 
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Ellis Anderson

Ellis Anderson first came to the French Quarter in 1978 as a young musician and writer.  Eventually, she also became a silversmith and represented local artists as owner of Quarter Moon Gallery, with locations in the Quarter and Bay St. Louis, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  

Her book about the Bay's Katrina experience, Under Surge, Under Siege, was published by University Press of Mississippi and won several awards, including the Eudora Welty Book Prize in 2010 and the Mississippi Library Association's Nonfiction Author's Award for 2011.  Under Surge, Under Siege was also short-listed as nonfiction finalist for the 2012 William Saroyan International Book Prize, Stanford University Libraries.

 In 2011, Anderson founded her first digital publication, the Shoofly Magazine and served as publisher from 2011 - 2022.  She established French Quarter Journal in 2019, where she currently serves as publisher and managing editor.

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The Faerie Playhouse on Esplanade
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Searching for an Artist and a Grandfather: Daniel Webster Whitney